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Russian Booster Rocket Fails to Deliver Satellites

MOSCOW — A Russian booster rocket carrying two telecommunications satellites malfunctioned during a launching early Tuesday, failing to deliver the satellites into their proper orbit and rendering them useless and unsalvageable.

Acknowledging the starkly different outcomes, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri O. Rogozin, who oversees Russia’s military industry, suggested in a Twitter post that the national space agency, Roscosmos, was struggling because of aging leadership. “As long as the youngest Roscosmos director is 62, we can only dream of Mars rovers,” Mr. Rogozin said.

The cause of the failure is under investigation, officials said.

The satellites, worth about $45 million, were intended to provide telecommunications services for Indonesian and Russian customers. They were carried by a Proton rocket, with a Briz-M booster, launched from Russia’s Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan.

During the launching, the Briz-M booster activated as scheduled but switched off after only seven seconds instead of the more than 18 minutes needed to propel the satellites into the proper orbit, Roscosmos said in a statement.

The booster and the two satellites have “not been detected on the transition orbit,” the space agency said, but rather “from the interim emergency orbit,” indicating a failure.

A Roscosmos spokesman said that space experts worldwide would monitor the lost satellites and that at least for the moment, they posed no danger to the International Space Station. “We have many years of successful experience in ensuring the safety of the station,” the spokesman said.

A similar malfunction with the Briz-M booster last August resulted in the loss of another communications satellite, which floated in space until March, when Russian scientists redirected it into the Pacific Ocean.

Aleksandr Zheleznyakov, a scientist with the Federation of Russian Cosmonautics, said the latest mishap was “a considerable blow to the industry’s image, particularly taking into account our many setbacks in the last couple of years.”

One of the lost satellites, called the Telekom-3, was the first Russian-made satellite bought by Indonesia. In May, a Russian-made Sukhoi Superjet 100 airliner crashed in Indonesia during a demonstration flight for potential buyers.

A version of this article appears in print on August 8, 2012, on page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: Russia: Launching of Satellites Fails. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe